Second Week-Term 1

Monday Warm-day:
Weather report this morning warned of the season's first **Frost** by the end of the week.

Attended the first meeting for Warwick Improvised Theatre Society (WITS). I tried to channel the teachings I remembered from Luna (1st acting instructor) and my theater friends. I used the space, freed my body parts, tried to keep awareness of 'safety zones', invaded people's space, and generally tried to be as foolish feeling as possible. We went for drinks afterward at the Dirty Duck, on campus. I might join up and attend their Thursday session, too. Campus has bars, but I'm not about to drink that beer. It's about the quality of Miller Light.

At this university you have to pay for every club membership and be on the official Warwick Uni registry in order to play with the society kids.

Tuesday Spa:

Road the bus to Leamington Spa for a day in the gardens. Queen Victoria used this town apparently for royal retreats, etc. Many of the houses & buildings here are a few hundred years old and still contain the servant's bells in the basements, where their rooms were traditionally located.

I mostly spent time in Jephson Gardens and Mill Gardens. Enough chit-chat, enjoy the view :)
Click on the pictures for a larger view.

St. John's Church. It was closed.

Leamington Spa Town Hall. How cool is this!

Town Hall

Oversized statue of Queen Victoria in front of Leamington Spa Town Hall.

Lionhead fountain at one of the entrances to the park.

Lionhead fountain up close.

The trees were so wildly tall. The building in the back is the Royal Pump Rooms & Bath. 

Yep, authentic old-school turkish baths tapped into local hot springs for the rich and dirty.

Found a Redwood here. Very cool.

Strike a pose, sir. You're about to be immortalized.... again.

I wonder what's going through his head? 

"How is thought possible? I'm made of stone. Oh look, a cookie!"

The Butterfly gardens.

This Japanese *** tree contracted a root fungus early in its sapling years. By the time they detected it, they had no choice, but to cut it down. Rather than throw all those lovely ginormous branches away, they made them, and the stump, into stunning benches with different engravings for the park. The other side of this trunk is a bench.

To give some perspective, these leaves are half my height. They're growing on the banks of the River Leam. 

Under the leaves.

The other bank.

The leaves are beginning to fall. The trees are changing.

River Leam, early autumn.

A lovely mixture of mediaeval & modern. 

The Royal Pump Rooms & Bath.

....and I caught site of these two lovely gems just before leaving. 

1. "Munchies" is a sandwich shop two doors down from "Planet Bong".

2. An employee of Munchies has now offered up another submission for Apostrophe. 

Wednesday Snoooze:
I slept in an extra 30 minutes this morning. Arrived on campus 1:30 hours early, slept for the first hour. Attended a 2 hour lecture on basic statistics (for the economic students), slept for about an hour off-and-on throughout. STILL asked more questions than the other students (save one) and even got some research talk in with the professor. At one point in my lecture nap I actually dreamt about sleeping.

I went straight home to nap, then couldn't sleep for lack of a snuggle buddy. I changed tactics and did a slow yoga routine to stretch my back, hamstrings, quads, calves, and shoulders. The entire back side of my body must have been all scrinched up I guess, because the practice felt wonderful.

Thursday Thinking:
CCCCold. FFFFront.
This is my long day of the week. I'm on campus first thing in the morning until possibly well after dark. Today was old and new theories which kept me just interested enough not to fall asleep. I really don't mean to, I just don't do well sitting for hours at a time not writing, not typing, not asking questions, while being lulled by soft talking English professors. For bucksakes I gotta do something! Which has always made me wonder about my long-winded meditation sessions. Am I reaching greater depths of consciousness or just falling asleep?

Met up with another student society tonight, WASH. I forget what it stands for. The meeting was at Terrace Bar on campus. Same beers at the Dirty Duck, so no thank you. We played pool, they drank beers, I enjoyed the rare soda-POP. Everyone seemed more interested in pointing out the differences between my American terms and their English terms.

English pool: 3 types of balls; red, yellow, and the 8 ball.
American pool: 1-7 solid balls, 9-15 striped balls, and the 8 ball.

English pool: you "pot" the ball.
American pool: you "sink" the ball.

English pool: potting the cue ball is a "foul".
American pool: sinking the cue ball is a "scratch".

English pool: a foul earns the other person two consecutive shots.
American pool: a scratch earns you limited free placement of the cue ball.

First Week-Term 1

Monday Madness:
GREAT GOBS OF GOOSE SLOO! There were a lot of students on campus Monday. I'm so glad I arrived a week early so I could get acquainted with the campus slowly and in my own time.

My first lecture was with Gordon Brown. No, not THAT Gordon Brown, but wouldn't that be a hoot. Sweet guy, super smart, didn't notice I was falling asleep. The way I see it, it could be that I was really good at covering my appearance, he wasn't as observant with me as he was with his lecture, or I didn't actually fall asleep and entered a new stage of hallucinatory-jet-laggy-crazy-fun-time. I'm OK with any possibility.

Between lectures I found a great tree to have lunch under-inside, and later, a great bench to enjoy the end of this English summer.

Tuesday Trials:
I must have made a unique impression on my professors from Monday, because the one who apologized in advance for not knowing students as quickly as he felt he should, called on me by name at our next meeting. But I couldn't help myself Monday. Professors Loomes & Read began a discussion on transitivity and preference theory. They were singing my song! In a nutshell, Loomes approached the scenario as an Economists, I countered his conclusions by approaching it as a Psychologist. Sweet, sweet music. Thank you Professor Berkich! (p.s. the pictures on this link are from his Advanced Logic course, where we learned these theories)

Also, I confirmed that there are at least 3 pubs on campus. That's right, I said pubs. Wine, beer, ale, Guinness, you name it.

Wednesday Wackout:
Started the day with Neil Stewart introducing us to the new statistics software (R) and programming language we'll be using to run our data. "R" is free software AND free-speech software. What does that mean, you say? It means A.N.Y.O.N.E. can download the software, rewrite it to suite his/her personal statistical software needs, then publish it for anyone else to use. It's also the hot-stuff right now for running large, nay ginormous data sets. I was of the minority that understood the basics behind the language, thanks to Professor Moreno.

After class all the Psychology and Economics MSc/PhD students attended a reception. Typical array of sandwiches, fruit, and muffins. Most of the sandwiches had some mysterious orange dressing on them, so of course I tried them all. The only ingredients I'm certain of are bread and cucumber. I ended up briefly talking with a first year PhD student who is investigating the victimhood of the bully/victim relationship. Her premise right now is that bullies show some sort of beneficial placement in human society, therefore she doesn't see the need to look into the making & role of bullies, just the making & role of victims and how they can cope, etc. I had to walk away before I made an enemy.

The Societies Fair was also today. What's that, you say? All the clubs come out to expose themselves to potential members. Exposures were varied. Check out the video. In fact, you're better off expanding it to full screen.

One of the dancing troupes.

One of the music groups.

Trying to navigate the labyrinthine madhouse that is Societies Fair. This clip begins with a shot of one of the campus pubs. Check out the variety of societies!

Thursday Rain:

This is the long day of the week. Economic lecture first thing in the morning, then 2 hours of hacking through learning a new computer language, followed by open research presentations (multi-discipline), then sharing sessions with psyc professors about ongoing research. In short, lots & lots of listening, lots & lots of note jotting. 

It's been super fun, though, watching the psyc grad students squirm in their seats during the economic lectures. We're supposed to be learning this term how traditional economists think. The upside for me, is that not a single psyc student agrees, so they questions and quarrel in class. I sit in the back. All I'm missing is a bucket of popcorn. Almost better than a Skyfall screening.